Configurable cloud-based routing

ABSTRACT

A system for adaptive cloud-based work routing comprising a work router for assigning work tasks and a routing configuration server for configuring operation or monitoring performance of a work router, and a graphical user interface for configuration of a cloud-based work router.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.14/629,493 titled “CONFIGURABLE CLOUD-BASED ROUTING”, filed on Feb. 24,2015, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser.No. 14/242,883 titled “ADAPTIVE CLOUD-BASED WORK ROUTING”, filed on Apr.2, 2014, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 9,015,250 on Apr. 21, 2015, theentire specifications of each of which are incorporated hereby byreference in their entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Field of the Art

The disclosure relates to the field of task management, and moreparticularly to the field of routing and assigning work tasks.

Discussion of the State of the Art

It is common for enterprises and corporations in the art to employinternal work routing systems, to assign work tasks to resources such assoftware systems or human personnel. Generally, these routing systemsrequire the manual configuration of complex routing strategies, toinstruct the system regarding how to assign work properly. Rules areconfigured and followed, and any change to routing must be effected byupdating and rewriting these routing strategies.

Such arrangements can be very costly, in terms of resources (hardwareand software resources must be dedicated to performing routingoperations), time and money (employing someone to maintain the routingstrategies). Additionally, such arrangements do not allow for adaptivebehavior, and must be manually updated if any changes are desired.Again, this can be quite costly as changes to routing must now beperformed manually, based on any observed results or metrics from priorrouting decisions, which therefore requires personnel to review ormonitor operations to determine if changes are needed.

What is needed, is a means to enable a human user to configure operationof an adaptive work routing solution, requiring minimal technicalknowledge or familiarity with a specific cloud-based routing platform.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly, the inventor has conceived and reduced to practice, in apreferred embodiment of the invention, a system for adaptive cloud-basedwork routing and means for a human user to configure operation of thesystem with minimal technical knowledge.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, a system foradaptive cloud-based work routing comprising a work router for assigningwork tasks and a routing configuration server for configuring operationor monitoring performance of a work router, is disclosed. According tothe embodiment, the work router and configuration system may be softwarecomponents operating on a network-connected device (for example, aserver or other network-connected computing device), and it should beappreciated that they may (as appropriate, according to a particulararrangement) operate independently (that is, on separate physicaldevices, such as in a distributed arrangement where interaction mayoccur over a network connection) or jointly on a single device.

According to the embodiment, a work router may receive work tasks from aplurality of clients (such as contact centers, individual devices, orany other potential source of work information), such as viacommunication over a network such as the Internet or other appropriatecommunications network. Work tasks may be any assignment that may bedesired, such as (for example) a particular inbound call from a customer(as may be received from a contact center) or a scheduled meetingbetween two parties (as might be received from a business or enterpriseclient). Such work tasks may then be compared by the work router to anyknown or retrieved criteria, such as (for example) checking knownstatistics pertaining to a contact center to see what agents areavailable, what skills or training they have had, how long they may havebeen waiting for a customer interaction, or any other of a variety ofrelevant metrics. The work router may then send a work assignment to aresource, based at least in part on the results of comparison performed(such as returning a specific agent to route a customer interaction to).

According to the embodiment, a “resource” may be any potential endpointfor a work assignment, such as a human operator or a software orhardware device or service that may handle a work assignment, and mayvary according to the nature of a particular assignment. Exemplaryresources may include the client itself (such as an interactive voiceresponse (IVR) system being assigned a work task such as for placing acall in a particular queue) or a resource operated by the client (suchas giving an assignment to a particular agent in the contact center thatthe work task originated from), or a resource not related to the clientsuch as an agent in a different contact center or a third-partyassignment service as is described below. It should be appreciated thatthe destination for a work assignment may not be the same as the sourceof a work task—for example, in a distributed contact center arrangement(such as a single corporation operating multiple separate contactcenters and utilizing a single cloud-based work router), a contactcenter A may submit a work task, and based on the results of comparisonperformed the work assignment may be sent to another contact center B(for example if the optimal agent for the interaction is in contactcenter B, or if a custom called contact center A after the close ofbusiness hours). Additionally (and continuing with the exemplary contactcenter use case), a work assignment may be given to a contact center ingeneral (such as to then be routed according to a contact center'snormal operation, for example based on internal call queuing protocols)or to a specific agent (such as when a work router is used to performcall queuing functions and no internal system is needed), as may beappropriate according to a particular arrangement. It should beappreciated that such behavior may be configurable (as described below),and a single work router may perform a variety of functions or operateaccording to a variety of configurations based on a particular client orwork task, such that a single work router may facilitate operation for avariety of clients and resources that may have varying needs orpreferences regarding operation (for example, one contact center maywish to perform internal call queuing and only utilize a work router fornon-customer interaction work tasks, while another contact center mayutilize a work router for all call queuing and interaction assignments).In this manner, work routing may be made more efficient than ordinarilypossible using in-house solution, that may be more limited in the scopeof their assigning abilities. It should be further appreciated that notall communication between clients and a work router may be work tasks orassignments. For example, a client may submit periodic status reports toa work router for use in routing operations, such as contact centeragent availability or other metrics, or a resource that received a workassignment may send an acknowledgement of the assignment being received,or a further acknowledgement when an assignment is completed. In thismanner a work router may maintain a current model of client status andoperations, to further enhance operation and provide relevant andefficient routing service.

Further according to the embodiment, operation of a work router may beconfigurable via a configuration server. Such configuration server mayvary in nature, such as website or other online interface, or via aspecific software component operating on a network-connected computer ordevice, or via a software application programming interface (API) forinteraction with third-party products or services, or via a graphicaluser interface such as that described herein (referring to FIG. 6). Auser may interact with a configuration server (such as by using anetwork-connected device to interact with a web interface) for suchpurposes as to view or alter configuration data for a work router, forexample to input new criteria to be used for comparison (such asupdating contact center agent skill sets or updating a work router whenparticular agents receive new training that may affect how work isassigned to them), or to observe operational data relevant to a workrouter (such as performance metrics of the router itself, for examplework task and assignment statistics such as number of tasks receivedfrom particular clients or number of assignments fulfilled). Anyconfiguration information may be stored for future reference, such as ina database or other storage medium (such as integral or removablestorage media operated by or connected to a configuration server). Inthis manner, configuration information may be persistent, facilitatingconsistent operation without repeated configuration by a user.

Further according to the embodiment, machine learning may be utilized bya work router to enhance operations. For example, as described above awork router may receive status updates or work assignmentacknowledgements from clients. Such updates may include informationpertaining to a particular work assignment, such as length of timebefore completion, results of completion (such as whether or not acustomer's issue was resolved, or whether a successful sale was made, orany other outcome according to a particular assignment), or any otherrelevant information. A work router may then utilize such information infuture routing decisions, such as (for example) incorporating theresults of work assignments in future comparisons, such as to ensurethat work is assigned to the ideal resource for completion. For example,in a contact center use case, an agent may have been assigned work thatthey were trained for but not particularly skilled at performing,yielding poor results. In future routing, this agent may be given lowerpriority as compared to others with similar training, such that similarwork assignments may be given to those agents more likely to yieldpositive results. Additionally, machine learning may be implemented inthe form of A-B testing, or experimental routing behaviors. For example,a work router may choose to send a work assignment to a resource basednot only on the results of comparison as described above, but also withthe intent of collecting results and other information to see how aresource performs (for example, routing a call to an agent for which noprior calls of this type have been routed). In this manner, a degree of“trial and error” operation may be performed, to attempt to discernunexpected results that may be used to improve operation and that mightotherwise not have been realized. Such testing behavior may beconfigurable, such as allowing a particular percentage of workassignments to be used for testing rather than strict comparison-basedrouting, and it should be appreciated that machine learning may also beused to improve operation of the testing itself—for example, a workrouter may find that the results of a particular test were undesirable,and reduce the percentage of tests involving that resource or that workassignment type, or alternately if a test yields positive results thenmore tests may be performed. In this manner, not only may operations bemanually configured as described above, but they may also be seen toadapt and improve through continuous operation.

According to another preferred embodiment of the invention, a graphicaluser interface (GUI) for configuration of a cloud-based work router isdisclosed. According to the invention, such configuration should bepossible for a user with minimal technical training and should notrequire programming knowledge (as is common with currentimplementations), to maximize effectiveness of configurable routingregardless of user familiarity. Accordingly, the inventor has conceiveda user-friendly means for configuration wherein no program code is used,instead utilizing easily-recognizable text- and graphic-based interfaceelements that may be descriptive of their internal operation. Accordingto the embodiment, a work routing system may internally identify routingelements such as agent skills (“sales”, “technical support”, etc.), andpresent these skills in a user-friendly configuration interface for auser to modify routing rules associated with them. Such configurationmay be facilitated by easily-understood text fields and menus, with thenecessary programming being handled by the router and the configurationinterface serving to “fill in the blanks”, and populate variables andvalues based on user input to modify router operation. For example, eachskill might have default rules (or previously-configured rules), andthese rules may be presented to a user by parsing them into the varioustext fields and menus in the configuration interface, so a user mayeasily view existing routing behaviors in an organized fashion. In thismanner, a user of unknown skill may be expected to reliably andeffectively configure operation of a work router.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING FIGURES

The accompanying drawings illustrate several embodiments of theinvention and, together with the description, serve to explain theprinciples of the invention according to the embodiments. It will beappreciated by one skilled in the art that the particular embodimentsillustrated in the drawings are merely exemplary, and are not to beconsidered as limiting of the scope of the invention or the claimsherein in any way.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary hardwarearchitecture of a computing device used in an embodiment of theinvention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary logical architecturefor a client device, according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing an exemplary architectural arrangementof clients, servers, and external services, according to an embodimentof the invention.

FIG. 4 is another block diagram illustrating an exemplary hardwarearchitecture of a computing device used in various embodiments of theinvention.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an exemplary system architecture foradaptive cloud-based work routing.

FIG. 6 is an illustration of an exemplary graphical user interface forconfiguring work router operation, according to a preferred embodimentof the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The inventor has conceived, and reduced to practice, in a preferredembodiment of the invention, a system and method for configurablecloud-based work routing.

One or more different inventions may be described in the presentapplication. Further, for one or more of the inventions describedherein, numerous alternative embodiments may be described; it should beappreciated that these are presented for illustrative purposes only andare not limiting of the inventions contained herein or the claimspresented herein in any way. One or more of the inventions may be widelyapplicable to numerous embodiments, as may be readily apparent from thedisclosure. In general, embodiments are described in sufficient detailto enable those skilled in the art to practice one or more of theinventions, and it should be appreciated that other embodiments may beutilized and that structural, logical, software, electrical and otherchanges may be made without departing from the scope of the particularinventions. Accordingly, one skilled in the art will recognize that oneor more of the inventions may be practiced with various modificationsand alterations. Particular features of one or more of the inventionsdescribed herein may be described with reference to one or moreparticular embodiments or figures that form a part of the presentdisclosure, and in which are shown, by way of illustration, specificembodiments of one or more of the inventions. It should be appreciated,however, that such features are not limited to usage in the one or moreparticular embodiments or figures with reference to which they aredescribed. The present disclosure is neither a literal description ofall embodiments of one or more of the inventions nor a listing offeatures of one or more of the inventions that must be present in allembodiments.

Headings of sections provided in this patent application and the titleof this patent application are for convenience only, and are not to betaken as limiting the disclosure in any way.

Devices that are in communication with each other need not be incontinuous communication with each other, unless expressly specifiedotherwise. In addition, devices that are in communication with eachother may communicate directly or indirectly through one or morecommunication means or intermediaries, logical or physical.

A description of an embodiment with several components in communicationwith each other does not imply that all such components are required. Tothe contrary, a variety of optional components may be described toillustrate a wide variety of possible embodiments of one or more of theinventions and in order to more fully illustrate one or more aspects ofthe inventions. Similarly, although process steps, method steps,algorithms or the like may be described in a sequential order, suchprocesses, methods and algorithms may generally be configured to work inalternate orders, unless specifically stated to the contrary. In otherwords, any sequence or order of steps that may be described in thispatent application does not, in and of itself, indicate a requirementthat the steps be performed in that order. The steps of describedprocesses may be performed in any order practical. Further, some stepsmay be performed simultaneously despite being described or implied asoccurring non-simultaneously (e.g., because one step is described afterthe other step). Moreover, the illustration of a process by itsdepiction in a drawing does not imply that the illustrated process isexclusive of other variations and modifications thereto, does not implythat the illustrated process or any of its steps are necessary to one ormore of the invention(s), and does not imply that the illustratedprocess is preferred. Also, steps are generally described once perembodiment, but this does not mean they must occur once, or that theymay only occur once each time a process, method, or algorithm is carriedout or executed. Some steps may be omitted in some embodiments or someoccurrences, or some steps may be executed more than once in a givenembodiment or occurrence.

When a single device or article is described herein, it will be readilyapparent that more than one device or article may be used in place of asingle device or article. Similarly, where more than one device orarticle is described herein, it will be readily apparent that a singledevice or article may be used in place of the more than one device orarticle.

The functionality or the features of a device may be alternativelyembodied by one or more other devices that are not explicitly describedas having such functionality or features. Thus, other embodiments of oneor more of the inventions need not include the device itself.

Techniques and mechanisms described or referenced herein will sometimesbe described in singular form for clarity. However, it should be notedthat particular embodiments include multiple iterations of a techniqueor multiple instantiations of a mechanism unless noted otherwise.Process descriptions or blocks in figures should be understood asrepresenting modules, segments, or portions of code which include one ormore executable instructions for implementing specific logical functionsor steps in the process. Alternate implementations are included withinthe scope of embodiments of the present invention in which, for example,functions may be executed out of order from that shown or discussed,including substantially concurrently or in reverse order, depending onthe functionality involved, as would be understood by those havingordinary skill in the art.

Hardware Architecture

Generally, the techniques disclosed herein may be implemented onhardware or a combination of software and hardware. For example, theymay be implemented in an operating system kernel, in a separate userprocess, in a library package bound into network applications, on aspecially constructed machine, on an application-specific integratedcircuit (ASIC), or on a network interface card.

Software/hardware hybrid implementations of at least some of theembodiments disclosed herein may be implemented on a programmablenetwork-resident machine (which should be understood to includeintermittently connected network-aware machines) selectively activatedor reconfigured by a computer program stored in memory. Such networkdevices may have multiple network interfaces that may be configured ordesigned to utilize different types of network communication protocols.A general architecture for some of these machines may be describedherein in order to illustrate one or more exemplary means by which agiven unit of functionality may be implemented. According to specificembodiments, at least some of the features or functionalities of thevarious embodiments disclosed herein may be implemented on one or moregeneral-purpose computers associated with one or more networks, such asfor example an end-user computer system, a client computer, a networkserver or other server system, a mobile computing device (e.g., tabletcomputing device, mobile phone, smartphone, laptop, or other appropriatecomputing device), a consumer electronic device, a music player, or anyother suitable electronic device, router, switch, or other suitabledevice, or any combination thereof. In at least some embodiments, atleast some of the features or functionalities of the various embodimentsdisclosed herein may be implemented in one or more virtualized computingenvironments (e.g., network computing clouds, virtual machines hosted onone or more physical computing machines, or other appropriate virtualenvironments).

Referring now to FIG. 1, there is shown a block diagram depicting anexemplary computing device 100 suitable for implementing at least aportion of the features or functionalities disclosed herein. Computingdevice 100 may be, for example, any one of the computing machines listedin the previous paragraph, or indeed any other electronic device capableof executing software- or hardware-based instructions according to oneor more programs stored in memory. Computing device 100 may be adaptedto communicate with a plurality of other computing devices, such asclients or servers, over communications networks such as a wide areanetwork a metropolitan area network, a local area network, a wirelessnetwork, the Internet, or any other network, using known protocols forsuch communication, whether wireless or wired.

In one embodiment, computing device 100 includes one or more centralprocessing units (CPU) 102, one or more interfaces 110, and one or morebusses 106 (such as a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus). Whenacting under the control of appropriate software or firmware, CPU 102may be responsible for implementing specific functions associated withthe functions of a specifically configured computing device or machine.For example, in at least one embodiment, a computing device 100 may beconfigured or designed to function as a server system utilizing CPU 102,local memory 101 and/or remote memory 120, and interface(s) 110. In atleast one embodiment, CPU 102 may be caused to perform one or more ofthe different types of functions and/or operations under the control ofsoftware modules or components, which for example, may include anoperating system and any appropriate applications software, drivers, andthe like.

CPU 102 may include one or more processors 103 such as, for example, aprocessor from one of the Intel, ARM, Qualcomm, and AMD families ofmicroprocessors. In some embodiments, processors 103 may includespecially designed hardware such as application-specific integratedcircuits (ASICs), electrically erasable programmable read-only memories(EEPROMs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and so forth, forcontrolling operations of computing device 100. In a specificembodiment, a local memory 101 (such as non-volatile random accessmemory (RAM) and/or read-only memory (ROM), including for example one ormore levels of cached memory) may also form part of CPU 102. However,there are many different ways in which memory may be coupled to system100. Memory 101 may be used for a variety of purposes such as, forexample, caching and/or storing data, programming instructions, and thelike.

As used herein, the term “processor” is not limited merely to thoseintegrated circuits referred to in the art as a processor, a mobileprocessor, or a microprocessor, but broadly refers to a microcontroller,a microcomputer, a programmable logic controller, anapplication-specific integrated circuit, and any other programmablecircuit.

In one embodiment, interfaces 110 are provided as network interfacecards (NICs). Generally, NICs control the sending and receiving of datapackets over a computer network; other types of interfaces 110 may forexample support other peripherals used with computing device 100. Amongthe interfaces that may be provided are Ethernet interfaces, frame relayinterfaces, cable interfaces, DSL interfaces, token ring interfaces,graphics interfaces, and the like. In addition, various types ofinterfaces may be provided such as, for example, universal serial bus(USB), Serial, Ethernet, Firewire™, PCI, parallel, radio frequency (RF),Bluetooth™, near-field communications (e.g., using near-fieldmagnetics), 802.11 (WiFi), frame relay, TCP/IP, ISDN, fast Ethernetinterfaces, Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, asynchronous transfer mode(ATM) interfaces, high-speed serial interface (HSSI) interfaces, Pointof Sale (POS) interfaces, fiber data distributed interfaces (FDDIs), andthe like. Generally, such interfaces 110 may include ports appropriatefor communication with appropriate media. In some cases, they may alsoinclude an independent processor and, in some in stances, volatileand/or non-volatile memory (e.g., RAM).

Although the system shown in FIG. 1 illustrates one specificarchitecture for a computing device 100 for implementing one or more ofthe inventions described herein, it is by no means the only devicearchitecture on which at least a portion of the features and techniquesdescribed herein may be implemented. For example, architectures havingone or any number of processors 103 may be used, and such processors 103may be present in a single device or distributed among any number ofdevices. In one embodiment, a single processor 103 handlescommunications as well as routing computations, while in otherembodiments a separate dedicated communications processor may beprovided. In various embodiments, different types of features orfunctionalities may be implemented in a system according to theinvention that includes a client device (such as a tablet device orsmartphone running client software) and server systems (such as a serversystem described in more detail below).

Regardless of network device configuration, the system of the presentinvention may employ one or more memories or memory modules (such as,for example, remote memory block 120 and local memory 101) configured tostore data, program instructions for the general-purpose networkoperations, or other information relating to the functionality of theembodiments described herein (or any combinations of the above). Programinstructions may control execution of or comprise an operating systemand/or one or more applications, for example. Memory 120 or memories101, 120 may also be configured to store data structures, configurationdata, encryption data, historical system operations information, or anyother specific or generic non-program information described herein.

Because such information and program instructions may be employed toimplement one or more systems or methods described herein, at least somenetwork device embodiments may include nontransitory machine-readablestorage media, which, for example, may be configured or designed tostore program instructions, state information, and the like forperforming various operations described herein. Examples of suchnontransitory machine-readable storage media include, but are notlimited to, magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks, andmagnetic tape; optical media such as CD-ROM disks; magneto-optical mediasuch as optical disks, and hardware devices that are speciallyconfigured to store and perform program instructions, such as read-onlymemory devices (ROM), flash memory, solid state drives, memristormemory, random access memory (RAM), and the like. Examples of programinstructions include both object code, such as may be produced by acompiler, machine code, such as may be produced by an assembler or alinker, byte code, such as may be generated by for example a Java™compiler and may be executed using a Java virtual machine or equivalent,or files containing higher level code that may be executed by thecomputer using an interpreter (for example, scripts written in Python,Perl, Ruby, Groovy, or any other scripting language).

In some embodiments, systems according to the present invention may beimplemented on a standalone computing system. Referring now to FIG. 2,there is shown a block diagram depicting a typical exemplaryarchitecture of one or more embodiments or components thereof on astandalone computing system. Computing device 200 includes processors210 that may run software that carry out one or more functions orapplications of embodiments of the invention, such as for example aclient application 230. Processors 210 may carry out computinginstructions under control of an operating system 220 such as, forexample, a version of Microsoft's Windows™ operating system, Apple's MacOS/X or iOS operating systems, some variety of the Linux operatingsystem, Google's Android™ operating system, or the like. In many cases,one or more shared services 225 may be operable in system 200, and maybe useful for providing common services to client applications 230.Services 225 may for example be Windows™ services, user-space commonservices in a Linux environment, or any other type of common servicearchitecture used with operating system 210. Input devices 270 may be ofany type suitable for receiving user input, including for example akeyboard, touchscreen, microphone (for example, for voice input), mouse,touchpad, trackball, or any combination thereof. Output devices 260 maybe of any type suitable for providing output to one or more users,whether remote or local to system 200, and may include for example oneor more screens for visual output, speakers, printers, or anycombination thereof. Memory 240 may be random-access memory having anystructure and architecture known in the art, for use by processors 210,for example to run software. Storage devices 250 may be any magnetic,optical, mechanical, memristor, or electrical storage device for storageof data in digital form. Examples of storage devices 250 include flashmemory, magnetic hard drive, CD-ROM, and/or the like.

In some embodiments, systems of the present invention may be implementedon a distributed computing network, such as one having any number ofclients and/or servers. Referring now to FIG. 3, there is shown a blockdiagram depicting an exemplary architecture 300 for implementing atleast a portion of a system according to an embodiment of the inventionon a distributed computing network. According to the embodiment, anynumber of clients 330 may be provided. Each client 330 may run softwarefor implementing client-side portions of the present invention; clientsmay comprise a system 200 such as that illustrated in FIG. 2. Inaddition, any number of servers 320 may be provided for handlingrequests received from one or more clients 330. Clients 330 and servers320 may communicate with one another via one or more electronic networks310, which may be in various embodiments any of the Internet, a widearea network, a mobile telephony network, a wireless network (such asWiFi, Wimax, and so forth), or a local area network (or indeed anynetwork topology known in the art; the invention does not prefer any onenetwork topology over any other). Networks 310 may be implemented usingany known network protocols, including for example wired and/or wirelessprotocols.

In addition, in some embodiments, servers 320 may call external services370 when needed to obtain additional information, or to refer toadditional data concerning a particular call. Communications withexternal services 370 may take place, for example, via one or morenetworks 310. In various embodiments, external services 370 may compriseweb-enabled services or functionality related to or installed on thehardware device itself. For example, in an embodiment where clientapplications 230 are implemented on a smartphone or other electronicdevice, client applications 230 may obtain information stored in aserver system 320 in the cloud or on an external service 370 deployed onone or more of a particular enterprise's or user's premises.

In some embodiments of the invention, clients 330 or servers 320 (orboth) may make use of one or more specialized services or appliancesthat may be deployed locally or remotely across one or more networks310. For example, one or more databases 340 may be used or referred toby one or more embodiments of the invention. It should be understood byone having ordinary skill in the art that databases 340 may be arrangedin a wide variety of architectures and using a wide variety of dataaccess and manipulation means. For example, in various embodiments oneor more databases 340 may comprise a relational database system using astructured query language (SQL), while others may comprise analternative data storage technology such as those referred to in the artas “NoSQL” (for example, Hadoop Cassandra, Google BigTable, and soforth). In some embodiments, variant database architectures such ascolumn-oriented databases, in-memory databases, clustered databases,distributed databases, or even flat file data repositories may be usedaccording to the invention. It will be appreciated by one havingordinary skill in the art that any combination of known or futuredatabase technologies may be used as appropriate, unless a specificdatabase technology or a specific arrangement of components is specifiedfor a particular embodiment herein. Moreover, it should be appreciatedthat the term “database” as used herein may refer to a physical databasemachine, a cluster of machines acting as a single database system, or alogical database within an overall database management system. Unless aspecific meaning is specified for a given use of the term “database”, itshould be construed to mean any of these senses of the word, all ofwhich are understood as a plain meaning of the term “database” by thosehaving ordinary skill in the art.

Similarly, most embodiments of the invention may make use of one or moresecurity systems 360 and configuration systems 350. Security andconfiguration management are common information technology (IT) and webfunctions, and some amount of each are generally associated with any ITor web systems. It should be understood by one having ordinary skill inthe art that any configuration or security subsystems known in the artnow or in the future may be used in conjunction with embodiments of theinvention without limitation, unless a specific security 360 orconfiguration system 350 or approach is specifically required by thedescription of any specific embodiment.

FIG. 4 shows an exemplary overview of a computer system 400 as may beused in any of the various locations throughout the system. It isexemplary of any computer that may execute code to process data. Variousmodifications and changes may be made to computer system 400 withoutdeparting from the broader spirit and scope of the system and methoddisclosed herein. CPU 401 is connected to bus 402, to which bus is alsoconnected memory 403, nonvolatile memory 404, display 407, I/O unit 408,and network interface card (NIC) 413. I/O unit 408 may, typically, beconnected to keyboard 409, pointing device 410, hard disk 412, andreal-time clock 411. NIC 413 connects to network 414, which may be theInternet or a local network, which local network may or may not haveconnections to the Internet. Also shown as part of system 400 is powersupply unit 405 connected, in this example, to ac supply 406. Not shownare batteries that could be present, and many other devices andmodifications that are well known but are not applicable to the specificnovel functions of the current system and method disclosed herein.

In various embodiments, functionality for implementing systems ormethods of the present invention may be distributed among any number ofclient and/or server components. For example, various software modulesmay be implemented for performing various functions in connection withthe present invention, and such modules may be variously implemented torun on server and/or client components.

Conceptual Architecture

FIG. 5 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary system architecture500 for providing cloud-based work routing, according to a preferredembodiment of the invention. According to the embodiment, a cloud-basedwork routing system 510 may comprise a work router 511 for receivingwork tasks and routing work assignments, a configuration server 512 forconfiguring operation of a work router, and a database 513 for storingand providing data (such as, for example, configuration preferences oroperation reports) to a work router 511 and configuration server 512. Asfurther illustrated, a cloud-based work routing system 510 may beconnected to a communications network such as the Internet 501 or otherappropriate network, such as to interact with a plurality of clients 502and resources 503 for operation. As described previously, both clients502 and resources 503 may be of varied nature and operation, such as(for example) a contact center or a component system or service of acontact center (such as an IVR, call recording system, or a humanresource such as a contact center agent or a review analyst). It shouldbe appreciated that while client 502 and resource 503 are illustratedindependently for clarity, such an arrangement is exemplary and a singlecomponent may operate as both a client and a resource according to theembodiment (for example, a contact center agent might submit a work taskfor routing, and then be assigned the resulting work assignment based onrouting logic described below).

According to the embodiment, clients 502 may communicate with acloud-based work router 511 for such purposes as to send work tasks orstatus reports. A work task may be any action or operation that may bedesirable to assign to a resource, regardless of the nature or scope ofthat task. For example, when a customer calls a contact center,answering the call and interacting with the customer might be a worktask (that would, for example, be routed to a contact center agent ableto appropriately handle the call). If the customer needs to be contactedat a later time, for example if they request a follow up call, therequested outbound call might be another work task (that would, forexample, be assigned to an appropriate agent and optionally scheduledfor a requested time or date). Performing any actions requested as apart of the customer interaction, such as account changes or fulfillinga sale, might be a further work task that would then be routed to anappropriate resource such as an account service specialist or a salesrepresentative. In this manner it can be appreciated that work tasks mayvary widely and a key function of a work router may be to determine thenature and needs of a particular work task and assign it accordingly.Similarly, status reports may vary in nature and content, such asperiodic reports of contact center agent availability, reports on systemstatus (such as notification if there is an issue with, for example, anIVR or a recording system), updates on agent skills or training, or anyother such information that may be relevant to work routing operations.These updates may be utilized by a work router 511 in making decisionssuch as how to assign work tasks, for example when selecting a contactcenter agent to assign a customer interaction, a work router 511 mightcheck any known agent skills and training to see who is qualified tohandle the interaction, as well as availability status to see who isavailable to receive a work assignment or who has been waiting thelongest for one. In this manner, it can be appreciated that a workrouter 511 may perform functions common to contact centers or other usecases, alleviating the need to maintain an internal system for suchpurposes.

Further according to the embodiment, a configuration server 512 may beutilized to configure or monitor operations or behavior of a cloud-basedwork routing system 510. For example, a user (such as a designedadministrator for a contact center) may connect to a configurationserver (such as via a web interface or other interaction front end) andestablish preferences or parameters for operation. These configurationparameters may then be stored in a database 513 and utilized inoperations. For example, a system utilized by a contact center may beconfigured to place priority on call handle time rather than number ofsales, such that in subsequent routing decisions calls may be routedpreferentially to agents with more desirable call handle time metricsand fewer sales, rather than those that may excel at sales but have lessdesirable handle time. In this manner, operations may be tailored to aparticular client's tastes easily, without having to manually configureor maintain detailed routing strategies as are commonly utilized in theart with internal routing solutions.

Detailed Description Of Exemplary Embodiments

FIG. 6 is an illustration of an exemplary graphical user interface (GUI)600 for configuration of a work router, according to a preferredembodiment of the invention. As illustrated, a plurality of check boxes611 or other interactive means may be presented to a user to easilyselect what skills 612 are being applied to an interaction (asillustrated, the interaction being routed has the “English”, “sales”,and “gold customer” skills flagged). This allows a user to easilyconfigure what relevant agent skills apply to a given interaction, toensure that agents with appropriate training are receiving work tasks.As further illustrated, each skill may have a definition 613 specified,that may represent an internal definition for identifying whether aparticular skill is relevant, such as (for example) if an interactioninvolves a customer whose account balance is over a specified threshold(as illustrated, the threshold has been set at 10,000) applying the“gold customer” skill to identify the interaction as involving ahigh-value customer. Additionally, a user may be given an interactiveelement such as a button 614 to edit these skill definitions as needed.Numerical fields 615 may be utilized, such as to specify numericalvalues such as a skill's time-to-live (TTL) threshold, after which theskill may be removed from an interaction to broaden the scope of routing(for example, by removing skills that may narrow down the number ofavailable agents that are appropriately trained for an interaction).Drop-down menus 616 may also be utilized, such as to allow a user toselect from a predetermined list of options such as for special behaviorflags, such as altering an interaction's priority (as illustrated). Inthis manner, a user may choose to configure routing such that certaininteractions may be given preference over others when making a routingdecision, such that if only a single agent is available ahigher-priority interaction may be given to them first. Interactivebuttons may be provided for instantaneous actions such as deleting 616or adding 617 skills to an interaction, such as to alter the availableagents for an interaction (by removing skills, the number of agents maybe increased by removing limiting factors in routing decisions, likewiseadding more skills may narrow down the number of agents by limiting whois allowed to handle the interaction based on their skillqualifications).

According to the embodiment, a timeline 620 may be displayed such as toillustrate a projected timeline for routing according to a specificconfiguration. As illustrated, based on the selections made it can beseen that no agents will be available to handle the interaction for atleast ten minutes, and that a single agent will be available when the“support” skill expires in fifteen minutes. In thirty minutes, when the“gold customer” skill expires and only the “English” language skillremains (as it has been configured without a TTL value, therefore itwill always exist on an interaction such as to ensure the interaction isalways routed to any English-speaking agent as a last resort), threeagents are projected to be available. In this manner a user may seereal-time projections of the outcome of their configurations, and maythereby optimize their own input to improve routing based on projectedbehavior.

According to the embodiment, all skills may be configurable as itemmodifiers. For example, a configuration display as illustratedrepresents the configuration for a single specific work item, or formultiple selected items being modified simultaneously. When a user addsor modifies skills as illustrated, these skills function as modifiers tothe routing behavior for the selected work items. For example, asillustrated the skills of “English”, “sales”, and “gold customer” arebeing applied. When routing work items, any skills that have not yetexpired (as determined by the time-to-live variable) apply theirassociated rules and values to the routing behavior for the work item,such as by limiting which agents are allowed to receive the work item,or what priority the work item is given relative to other work itemsthat may also be eligible for routing at the same time.

The skilled person will be aware of a range of possible modifications ofthe various embodiments described above. Accordingly, the presentinvention is defined by the claims and their equivalents.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system for adaptive cloud-based work routing,comprising: a network-connected computing machine comprising a workrouter; an interactive software application stored in a memory of andoperating on and operating on a processor of a user computing device; aplurality of external resources; wherein the interactive softwareenables a user to configure and dynamically change a set of routingrules; wherein each routing rule of the set of routing rules comprise atleast one skill of a plurality of skills; wherein a threshold isassigned to each skill of the plurality of skills, the plurality ofskills associated to the plurality of external resources; wherein thethreshold determines a time-to-live after which the associated skill maybe removed from an interaction to broaden a scope of resources of anassociated routing rule of the set of routing rules; wherein the workrouter receives communication from a client software application via apacket data network, the information pertaining to a work task to beperformed, and wherein the work router selects a specific externalresource to perform the work task using the routing rules and sends datapertaining to the work task to the specific selected external resource;and wherein the work router adapts its routing selections based at leaston dynamic changes in the routing rules and based on associatedthresholds associated to the skills of the routing rules.
 2. A method ofproviding adaptive cloud-based work routing, comprising the steps of:(a) configuring routing rules, using an interactive softwareapplications stored in a memory of and operating on and operating on aprocessor of a user computing device; (b) assigning a threshold to eachskill of a plurality of skills, the plurality of skills associated toexternal resources; (c) determining a time-to-live threshold after whichthe associated skill may be removed from an interaction to broaden ascope of resources of an associated routing rule of the set of routingrules; (d) receiving data from the external resources pertaining to awork task to be performed; (e) processing, using an adaptive workrouter, a request for assignment of an external resource to perform thework task; (f) selecting an external resource to perform the work taskaccording to the routing rules; (g) sending data pertaining to the worktask to the selected external resources based at least in part on theprocessing; and (h) receiving dynamic changes to the routing rules andadapting routing selections of the work router based at least on thedynamic changes to the routing rules and based on associated thresholdsassociated to the skills of the routing rules.